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Actual Healing: What Flash Approaches Can Teach Us About How Humans Heal

There is a lot more talk about healing out there than there is actual healing. Nearly all of our best intuition about how humans heal is simply wrong. But how we actually heal is relatively simple. We have experiences over and over that teach us different things than what the bad experience taught us. Sometimes what those new experiences can teach us is simply that the bad thing isn’t happening right here right now. That it’s over. The information stored in that memory in your nervous system is over. Real and concrete experiences that you can have today, right now in fact, can make a hot memory one that no longer hits you like the kick of a horse. And, you can heal in ways that are actually pleasant, distracting, or relaxing.

Flash shows that it is possible to process trauma as information rather than as distress. One of Flash’s biggest problems in reaching a broader audience is that there isn’t enough distress in it to seem like it could possibly work. We are so conditioned to expect distress to accompany trauma that we are skeptical of any trauma work that doesn’t involve it. This skepticism despite the fact that catharsis itself rarely actually leads to healing. Encounters with large chunks of distress in your own life have never resulted in healing, clarity, or insight. Even trauma therapists often make distress a prerequisite for healing to be believable. The ability to separate distress from trauma seems non-intuitive, like the ability to separate wet from water. Yet we know that trauma is information. If you are an EMDR therapist, you understand that. An individual piece of trauma is an individual instance of learning, an individual chunk of information.

And, how we work with that piece of information matters. Left to our own devices, we often try to work with too much. Rumination is a way to activate a lot of information all at once and make interpretations based on that spinning mass of information and have all the attached affect. EMDR Therapy, however, is much more focused. It’s memory-focused and is constructed in such a way that it helps us process chunks of information in individual memories by removing the obstacles and letting the trauma connect with adaptive information that other parts of the system somehow already know. Even in EMDR Therapy, we are working with slices of the experience at a time and standard protocol advises us to start with a salient slice, which can be a pretty thick slice of memory content.

There are other ways to work in EMDR Therapy that Shapiro mentions for complex trauma, including using the videotape approach that splits the memory into much smaller and more digestible pieces. Imagine a loaf of bread where we get one slice out of the loaf at a time and don’t get the next piece out until the current piece is consumed and mostly digested. I’ve worked in this way with clients with complex trauma and simply helping the client control the rate of information coming into working memory dramatically decreases the amount of distress experienced and it is a faster way to work with clients with complex trauma. Inside EMDR Therapy, there are many ways to do this. My videotape script for EMDR is linked in the notes section below.

Now, Flash. And what I’m about to describe is in reference to the Four Blinks Version (http://FourBlinks.com). Other versions may vary conceptually and practically. Imagine a deli slicer with the blade here and set on the thinnest possible slice. Other than touching the memory just enough to select it—drop it in the slicer—we are not referencing or working with the memory as a whole. We are only working on the right side of the blade one microslice at a time. We engage the memory for a fraction of a second and immediately container whatever tiny piece of the memory came out. Do you know what a tiny piece of the memory is? It’s a piece not big enough to have that much accompanying distress. It’s a piece not big enough for your parts to have many thoughts or feelings about. It’s too fast and not enough content to cause either shut-down or fuel rumination. And, again, do you know what that piece is? It’s information from the trauma that your nervous system is about to have six back-to-back experiences in the calm scene that show clearly and to all parts of you that that tiny piece of the memory isn’t happening right now because you are having an experience of safety, or amusement, or hunger, or astonishment. Those experiences in the calm scene are your embodiment of the disconfirmation. The little piece we container is the piece of the memory that is about to get fully or partially reprocessed in the next round of the calm scene. If we are only bringing a tiny slice of the memory into working memory at a time, where is the rest of the memory currently located? It’s not in working memory. It’s in the limbic brain (or wherever trauma is stored when it’s packaged up out of awareness… depending on the brain metaphor you are using). A good chunk of trauma literature assumes that touching the memory anywhere brings it into working memory. But maybe that’s not true. Maybe a memory is more divisible than that. It’s not like a proton or neutron that you can’t slice without incident. In fact, slicing it thinner may be how we avoid incident. Overactivation in trauma work slows everything down and starts up processes precisely designed to protect the system from that very type of activation.

The active ingredient in Flash is a large number of exposures to the calm scene. The purpose of the blinks every five seconds is to split each thirty-second experience to your calm scene into six five-second experiences. If you don’t blink in Flash, the memory still resolves, it just takes several hours instead of 30 minutes because it takes longer to the hundreds of experiences in the calm scene when you don’t break it into microexposures with blinks. Bruce Ecker is right. Humans heal when we have experiences that disconfirm the expectation in the bad memory. This happens hundreds of times in an average Flash session and the experience that you have in Flash does not have to be a precisely disconfirming experience the way it does in Ecker’s Coherence Therapy. Again, we are moving only one memory. A general mismatch works just fine. Ecker is trying to shift large memory networks associated with entire negative cognitions. The key that you need to unlock a moped is different from the key that unlocks the vault at Fort Knox. And we are taking the moped. With complex trauma, we take the moped.

Did you know that humans can process trauma while sitting in a positive state? My guess is that part of you will say no. I also suspect that other parts of you already know that this is the only way we have ever healed… by having disconfirming positive experiences. If you have ever had a transformational conversation with a close friend… do you know what you had? You had an experience. We are wounded experientially and we heal through experiences also. If you ever had a great EMDR reprocessing session, do you know what you had? Experiences that were different than the expectation in the bad memory. How do we heal from relational wounds? We heal relationally. We heal by having experiences in relationships that are different than the expectations in the bad experiences. What is parts work other than opportunities for parts of you to experience other parts of you in ways that are different than the expectation in the bad memories.

We are at the conundrum that I’ve been circling for several years now. We have very few ways for people with complex trauma to actually heal. Yes, we can resource them to the end of the universe, but actual healing… there aren’t that many ways to do that. What Flash can teach us about healing is that there are ways to process trauma that have remarkably little distress, that are reliable and predictable, that are associated with a very low risk of decompensation, that can be done easily in groups (which is also how humans once healed… in groups), that are safe and effective enough to be done self-administered, and that when done well will fully and permanently shift almost any form of stuck information. It does this with virtually no distress. And it does all of it using a model—that when we actually think about it—we already believe in as one of the ways that healing actually happens when it does happen. But we won’t believe it because it doesn’t feel intuitive. Our gut tells us we need different things. Because it’s not distressing enough. Because it doesn’t feel real or what we are used to. But we will do… even in our own private lives… I’m looking at you too, therapists… we will do endlessly the distressing thing over and over that has never—not even one time—moved the tiniest slices of stuck information.

We are attached to the wrong intuitions when it comes to healing. I blame cultures for this. The same cultures that wound us, teach us categories of emotion concepts designed to keep us stuck, teach us how to ruminate, teach us how to blame and humiliate ourselves for what was done to us, and highly shape our intuition about which forms of healing work and which are suspect. Healing yourself using culturally non-intuitive strategies may be one of the last truly revolutionary acts permissible for an individual in our cultures. Which is why I have been trying to make as much of this as I can absolutely free. If this is a way that humans can heal, then this healing pathway has been with us for as long as we have been human. Through all the bad wars, through all the bad moms, through all the horrible flu and epidemic weekends, through all the cultural ideas designed to divide us, through all the bad men we have had ways to heal that are fast, reliable, painless, and permanent. If this is a way that humans can heal, nobody owns that. These healing pathways are our common heritage, our common birthright, and a core function of being human. We have to figure out how to do this.

Someone is going to come along and see what approaches like Flash can teach us about how humans actually heal… and they are going to package it into some kind of psychotherapy, game, app, dance, meditation, or spirituality that will let us all see it. Really see it. And that isn’t just going to change what we do, professionally. It has the potential to change who we are as a species. We may become the kind of people who can actually heal and recover from our shit, rather than endlessly talking about and preparing to heal. We may be able to rescue ourselves and do something that the prior 50, 500, generations before us could not. We may be able to actually heal ourselves.

The videotape script that I reference is available in this free training on helpful strategies in the reprocessing phases of EMDR Therapy.

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What’s Different in The Four Blinks Version of Flash (A Deeper Dive)

What’s Different about the Four Blinks Version of Flash: A Deeper Dive

This version of Flash has an easy, simple, working mechanism…  that just works.

The Four Blinks Version of Flash has a clearly articulated working mechanism that shapes everything that is in there and it also explains why other things aren’t in there.  It emerges from very simple concept from Bruce Ecker that humans heal when we activate difficult content and then sit with experiences that contradict the expectation in the bad memory.  Experiences, not knowledge, that contradict.  In Flash approaches, we do this hundreds of times in a single 30 to 40-minute session.  Yes, Bruce Ecker is primarily interested in shifting whole neighborhoods of cognitions and to do that, the disconfirming information has to be precise.  In Flash, the disconfirmation can be general.  In fact, Flash approaches can inform other memory reconsolidation approaches in that if you want to resolve a single memory faster, you need a large number of disconfirming experiences in a short amount of time.  And, in this conceptualization, the blinks when you are in your calm/disconfirming experience split a 30-second exposure of the experience into six five-second exposures.  If you do not blink in Flash approaches, the memory still resolves, just much slower, because it takes longer to get to hundreds of exposures to the calm scene.  Yes, seeing a video of a bubbly hot pizza coming out of the oven over and over is disconfirming enough to process memories of childhood sexual abuse.  This conceptualization is elegant and guides every single word in the Four Blinks Version of Flash treatment guide.

Other working mechanisms that are not endorsed in this version of Flash is that it works because we are disrupting working memory.  But, I don’t want to do anything that distracts you from your core task of finding your way back into the disconfirming experience.  You can have your clients to bilateral, but it’s an extraneous variable.  In this version, I promise that bilateral is not an active ingredient.  If you absolutely love Yankee Doodle, you can have your clients hum it.  You can try to have them hum it backward, but it is not going to help them find their way quickly and efficiently back into the active ingredient of the  positive/disconfirming state.  Do you know what happens when you do things, like with EMDR 2.0, and directly distract the client from the activation that you just guided them into?  They are very likely having an experience that is different than the expectation in the bad memory.  So, it is entirely possible, that our disrupting working memory approaches work because the client is having a disconfirming experience, rather than the memory is somehow being nudged by these disruptions.  Which in the end simply means that in the end, Bruce Ecker, is again right that humans heal when we have experiences that disconfirm the expectation in the bad memory… or as van der Kolk says in the most quoted line in The Body Keeps the Score, for the “body to have experiences that deeply and viscerally contradict the helplessness, rage, or collapse that result from trauma.”

Phil Manfield, who developed Flash, appears to be moving toward a subliminal activation working mechanism.  It may, in the end, be productive, but that’s not what I’m trying to show people how to do.  I’m showing them how to activate the memory very lightly and sit with different experiences since every transformational psychotherapy involves some level of activation and engagement with the memory content.

This working mechanism that I endorse added benefit of being something that you already know.  How have you gotten past something?  As a human, when you have gotten past something, you have done so by having experiences that are different than and disconfirming of the experiences in the bad memory.  We heal relationally from our relational wounds.  Parts work works because it encourages the system to have experiences that are different than the expectation in the bad memory.

From the very beginning, this version of Flash has been viewed as a potential approach to psychotherapy.

The early articulations of Flash were simply wrong about Flash’s potential.  When you do Flash approaches well, the memory resolves and resolves using every metric that we would consider that memory resolved in EMDR or any other transformational psychotherapy.  I used to go out of my way to make the case that Flash fully resolved memories.  You simply need to see it.  And, if Flash resolves memories then this is a way that humans can heal.  If this is a way that humans can heal, then we need to be helping people do that.  Flash can turn any resource into a transformational trauma therapy.  You can narrate, you can dance, you can pet your dog under his chin, you can rock a baby or imagine rocking a baby.  If this is a way that humans can heal, then it has to become a psychotherapy.  David Archer’s newest book, Racial Trauma Recovery, articulates an anti-oppressive Flash-based psychotherapy…. It’s the first book-length conceptualization of Flash as a comprehensive approach to healing that I’m aware of.

In the Four Blinks Version of Flash we do not check the SUDs. Flash approaches tend to fail when we overactivate and the purpose of checking the SUDs in EMDR is to activate.  I use the deli slicer metaphor in working on the memory.

In this version of Flash, we do not container the memory once we start working on it.  In fact, we are only working on one microslice of the memory at a time.  In fact, we are only bringing into working memory one tiny piece of the memory at a time.  While Flash will generally work if you ask the client to container the memory, this version of Flash is guided by this understanding that are bringing only a microslice of the memory into awareness at a time.  Lightly activating the memory allows us to quickly container it and allow all of our attention to be available to the calm scene, over and over.

This version of Flash is parts-centric.  There is parts language built into every core step.  It’s 2023.  Get consent.

This version of Flash has the body on the radar at all times.  When other versions of Flash reliably end with a SUDs of 1, 2, or 3, often this is because the body isn’t on the radar.  This version of Flash has the built-in Shop Vac resource to quickly get distress from overactivation out of the body as quickly as possible.

This version of Flash anticipates that clients may over-activate and has clear instructions in the script for dealing with overactivation with the requirement to teach all clients both the Shop Vac and sensory grounding prior to working on any memories.

We have been trying to heal for as long as we have been human.  There are two pages in the script that guide clients on how to do self-administered Flash when the therapist believes that may be appropriate to help manage what may come up between sessions.  Clients have been trying to heal forever, they have just been doing it using very inefficient cultural strategies.  This is a highly effective strategy for clients to use between sessions and is built around two resources that I want them to be using anyway if they are triggered by memory… out of the understanding that they are going to dancing with this content until it gets recontainered in their limbic brains anyway.

Despite my deep love of doing Flash in this way, I’m not arguing and I have never argued that this version is better than any other version.  I’m just claiming that this is one way to do Flash well.  It is built around an understanding of how humans heal that already makes sense—we’re just not used to doing it in this way.  The treatment guide is comprehensive and provides needed resources that should be important for doing any type of trauma work.  This version of Flash has an explicitly developed and tested container and it is built especially for my clients with really extreme trauma.  It stresses the importance of outsourcing the calm scene to a video on YouTube or related service for clients with really complex trauma.

This version of Flash is open.  It is not copyright.  People may own their individual copyrighted scripts, but if this is a way that humans can easily, reliably, and predictably heal nobody owns this.  It is already in you.  It is your birthright and yours as a function of being human.  You can use it, you can train it, you can research it, you can modify it, and you can use it to develop the psychotherapy that will change how mental health services are delivered globally in the 21st century.

If how you are already doing Flash works great, keep doing that.  If you aren’t seeing you clients fully resolve memory 90% of the time in one session, take the training, take the free consultation, and be in touch.  I will work with you almost endlessly and for free until you see what see.  That Flash is the closest thing we have to a combination lock to unlock trauma.  Three rounds to the right, two to the left, back to the final number, click.  If you are not seeing that, there are ways to do Flash better.

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Wrap Up/Learn More

Things you can do to learn more.

  • Download the script and read it carefully.  A surprising number of people get stuck because they do not understand how to do this version of Flash because they have not interacted with the actual script/treatment guide.  It is short, probably the shortest “book” about an approach to therapy that exists (< 20 pages).
  • Watch the recent Flash demos (available on front page of Four Blinks website).
  • If you can, join an upcoming Flash training event. Schedule under Schedule a Consultation at EMDRTom.com.
  • Join the Flash Sandbox group on Facebook.
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Step Seven (Optional): Flash Future Template

The Flash future template allows you to easily leverage the work you just did when the memory resolved toward a future scene.

Examples where a Flash future template may be helpful:

  • Relationship (of any type) conflict that the client just resolved is likely to continue. Target a future incident of this person doing or saying something that is triggering and similar to the memory you just resolved.
  • Auto accident that you just worked on.  Target a future scene where the client is driving by the accident site sometime soon with the goal of not feeling panic.
  • Sexual assault memory that the client just resolved involves a particularly triggering aspect that affects the client’s current intimate relationship AND the client would like to desensitize that trigger further.  Target a future scene where the client is engaging in consensual sexual activity in which that trigger occurs.
  • Thanksgiving with family is highly triggering for many people.  Christmas happens 30 days later.  Same people, same racist uncle, different foods.  After resolving the memory of Thanksgiving, target the scene of Christmas.

In general, Flash future templates work better when past work has been resolved and you simply change the orientation to the future prong.  Again, the future scene should not be catastrophic (i.e. “now imagine your other child dies…,” etc).

Script: Since we have time, would you like to leverage the work that you just completed toward a potential future scene?  The future scene should be one that is likely to happen in the next few weeks and it shouldn’t be catastrophic.  Can you think of something that is related to the memory that you just completed that might happen in the next few weeks that would be helpful to try to calm down before it happens?

Engage in the following loop between A and B until the client can play the future scene and there is no distress on any channel:

A: Microactivate the Future Scenario

“Think very quickly about that future scene and see whatever is distressing about it in this millisecond go into your container.  Push your container out of your awareness.  Let me know when it is gone.”  When client indicates it is gone, go to the right column for more calm scene with blinks and continue looping between left and right columns until there is no distress in the future scene.

B: Do Calm Scene with Blinks

“Load up your calm scene and let me know when you are there…” When the client indicates they are there, say the word “blink” every five seconds for a duration of 30 seconds (exactly the same as you did in Step Four when working on the memory).  After 30 seconds in the calm scene with blinks, ask the client: “Were you able to stay in the calm scene?”  If activation intruded on the calm scene, container that activation and return to the calm scene with blinks, before returning to check the part of the memory that last intruded.

Wrap Up

End by playing the video of the future scene, containering any distress that appears, and doing rounds in the calm scene with blinks until the client can play the future scene with no distress.

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Step Six: Walk Through the Video of the Memory and Clear Out any Residue

After the client cannot identify any distress in the memory in Step Five, say something like one of the following:

  • “Now just flip through each frame of the memory one at a time looking for any left-over pieces of distress, even if it’s a tiny bit.  Let me know when you find the first piece of distress.”
  • “Now that you can’t find distress from looking outside in, let’s walk through the memory slowly like it’s a video you are playing from the beginning.  Let me know let me know the instant you find any distress, even if it’s a tiny bit.”

If there is any distress: “See whatever is distressing in this millisecond go into your container, see the container close, and push the container far out of your awareness.  Let me know when it is gone.” 

 When the client indicates that the memory is containered, quickly return to Step Four and do another round of calm scene with blinks.  Then, return to Step Six and ask: “Is there any heat remaining in that part of the memory that just had distress a moment ago?”  If there is any residual distress, return to Step Four for a round of calm scene with blinks.  Keep checking for distress in just that piece of the memory and send the client back to Step Four until there is no distress in that piece of the memory.

When there is no distress in that part of the memory, instruct the client to: “Play the memory forward and let me know as soon as you find the next link of distress.”  When the next piece of distress is found, keep doing loops between Step Four (the calm scene with blinks) and checking the distress of just this piece until the distress is gone in that piece.  Keep playing the memory forward until the client can play the full memory with no distress on any channel.

Sometimes the distress that comes at this stage may be in the form of thoughts, for example, “It’s just upsetting that it happenened.”  Put that thought in the container and it is likely to decrease in distress after a round or two of blinks in the calm scene.  Sometimes clients need to visualize thoughts being written into a piece of paper and see that paper go into the container in order make the thoughts concrete enough to container.

If the client is able to play all parts of the memory and there is no distress on any channel, then the memory is resolved.  Check-in with the memory next session to verify that all parts of the memory remain resolved.

Note: Do not be surprised if clients find pieces of the video of the memory in Step Six that still feel very distressing.  This is common.  They are likely to be metabolized quickly after several rounds in the calm scene with blinks.

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Step Five: Quickly Glance at the Memory and Contain the Microslice of Distress

Important Links:

The goal in this step is to microactivate a tiny, tiny, piece of the memory content.   We decrease activation by decreasing the amount of time that the client is exposed to the bad memory. Activating the memory too much may cause the following, all of which are problems that must be addressed and resolved immediately in this version of Flash:

  • A part of the video of the memory plays (we want a single frame only from the bad memory… not video content).
  • Body activation to appear (if body activation appears, see the Shop Vac resource in this guide or in the resource videos on EMDRThirdWeekend.com).  Too much body activation may cause memories other than the one we are targeting to come into awareness.
  • A flashback occurs (teach all clients the sensory grounding resource in this guide or use your own sensory grounding exercises).
  • Problems containering are usually problems of overactivation.

In order to lightly activate the memory and container it, say something like one of the following:

  • “Very quickly, open the door on the bad memory and immediately close it.  Whatever you notice in this millisecond, catch it, container it, and push it out of your awareness.  Let me know when it is gone.”
  •  “Check the memory for one millisecond and the instant that you find something, immediately container it and push the container out of your awareness.  Let me know when it is gone.”

When the client indicates that the next micoslice of the the distressing memory is containered and sent out of awareness, quickly go back to Step Four and cycle between Steps Four and Five until the client can glance at the memory and can’t identify any distress.

If the client cannot find any distress when glancing at the memory, go to Step Six.

Important Safety Considerations:

  • Therapists should be comfortable using sensory grounding for clients who have flashbacks or other intrusive symptoms when glancing at the memory.  It is essential that all Flash clients be taught sensory grounding exercises prior to engaging in direct trauma work.  See the sensory ground resource available in this packet.
  • Carefully review the Troubleshooting and FAQ sections before working with clients in this version of Flash.

Troubleshooting Tips Related to Step Five

  • Do not check the SUDs in this version of Flash.  Checking the SUDs (assessment of distress on 0-10 scale) is an activation strategy to assess for how much distress remains in the memory.  Do not do it. You are likely to cause unnecessary activation of parts of the memory that the client has not yet brought into awareness (remember we are working only one microslice at a time).  If you would like to know the SUDs for the client’s note, ask after the memory has been fully reprocessed (the client will remember how “hot” that memory was, but now it is safe to check it).  For this version of Flash to work, there is no reason why you need to know the SUDs.  You simply need to know whether or not the client can find a microslice of distress remaining in the memory and container it.  There is no need to ever know how much distress remains in that memory.  Don’t overactivate it and whatever remains is likely to clear if you keep reprocessing.
  • Let the client know that the memory content that they are handling is like a hot potato.  Touch it only as long as needed to very quickly toss it into the container.  Slowing down containment can cause distress to seep into awareness and the body.
  • Enter an agreement with the client not to overly activate the memory.  It’s like Catholic teen dating.  We have an agreement not to “fully go-there go-there, but just ish or kinda.”  Parts of the system typically like this agreement not to overly activate the memory and to work only a tiny microslice at a time.
  • Be aware of your pacing.  Metaphorically, the loops that occur between Phases Four and Five act as a kind of pump for tiny pieces of distress and traumatic memory content at a time.  Keep the pump going and keep it going quickly.  Practice the loop between Steps Four and Five so that you can quickly move the client from one to the other without pauses between your instructions.  Too much empty time can cause connections to form with other memory content or distress may start to seep and both of these are problems in Flash.
  • Clearly instruct clients that we are working on one memory at a time.  Allowing many memories to connect is a recipe for disaster. The free association of EMDR is not permitted here, nor is noticing distress (any distress needs to be immediately containered regardless of where or why it appears). You can instruct the client not to allow other memories into awareness and to let you know if other memories are trying to intrude and you can help the client container the assorted memories. Adjacent memories coming into awareness is also an indicator of overactivation and body distress, check for body distress and container or vacuum it out immediately. Body activation may act like a “magnet” for memories of similar times the body felt that way.
  • Keeping the memory out of direct attention/awareness is critical.  Briefly bringing microslices of the memory into awareness, containering it, pushing it out of direct attention, and loading up a calm scene that we interrupt with blinks are the central elements in this process.  It is important that the calm scene and the memory not interact with each other.  It is important that the container be pushed far enough away (and the client feels that the memory is far enough away that it won’t intrude into the scene).  If the memory keeps intruding into the calm scene, strengthen the container and push it farther away.  Changing the calming scene to something even more compelling can also help.  If the client is struggling to visualize their own calm place, you can play a beach scene from YouTube or another video that the client finds relaxing.  Many clients with trauma struggle to visualize in compelling ways.  Outsourcing the visualization part to simply actively watching a video will often result in much faster reprocessing.  Problems with containering are often problems of overactivation.
  • If the client activates too much and is having a flashback of the memory, immediately use sensory grounding. See the sensory grounding script in this guide.  It will walk you through how to handle a flashback and how to resume reprocessing after a flashback

FAQ Related to Step Five:

  • If we do not check the SUDSs, how will I know when the client can’t find distress and we should move to Step Six?  Remember that in each step of the process we are giving the client very clear instructions about what to do.  In Step Five, we are asking them to check the memory, catch the distress, and container it.  If the client can’t find what is distressing in the memory they are likely to tell us, since they cannot do the task we are asking them to do.  Also, you can simply say once (not repeatedly) in Step Five, “Simply let me know when you check the memory and you cannot find distress in the memory.”
  • What is meant by “process the traumatic memory as information, rather than as distress?” Since we are able to route most of the distress away from awareness and away from the body, many clients are able to process the distress of the traumatic memory with nearly the ease of catching and tossing aside a ball.  A lot of the distress that comes from trauma work comes from our parts reacting to too much traumatic information coming into awareness too quickly.  For more see the “Walking the Prisoner Out Metaphor” on the EMDR Third Weekend site.
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Step Four: Load Up the Calm Scene and Blink Every Five Seconds

This is the step where we will spend most of our time and where all of the reprocessing of the micro-slices of the memory occurs.  Most of the Four Blinks Version of Flash is spent in a loop between Steps Four and Five.  This is the only step where blinks are included.

When you arrive at Step Four for the first time in a session, instruct the client on how to do the blinks: Bring up the positive scene and let me know when you are there.  I will say blink every five seconds and when I do, you just blink your eyes several times quickly.  After blinking, go right back into the calm scene.  We will do this for about 30 seconds at a time.  [Give the client a moment to load the positive scene].

After the first time you are in Step Four, say one of the following (do not repeat the instructions above, since the client knows what to do when you say “blink”):

  • “Return to your calm scene, let me know when you are there.”
  • “Load up your calm scene and just notice the details of it.  Nod or indicate when you are there.”

While the client is in the calm scene, the therapist says “blink” every five seconds for a total of five times (about 30 seconds for the whole set).  Verify that the client is blinking several times rapidly.  If the client blinks more than several times quickly or blinks slowly, it will consume time unnecessarily from the next five second exposure to the calm scene.   Most clients simply blink twice rapidly.  It is not essential that the blinks occur at exactly five seconds (sometimes four seconds, sometimes seven seconds are just fine… nothing magical happens at five seconds).

When you have said “blink” a total of five times at about five seconds apart, ask the client:  “Good.  We you able to keep finding your way back into positive scene?”

If the client struggled to stay in the scene because of distractions, normalize that.  It is not necessary to be in the calm scene 100% of the time when distractions come.  If the client is struggling to return to the calm scene after the blinks, consider switching to a more compelling scene or to a compelling video that the client can watch.  Also, it will take multiple rounds of practice to quickly load up and go in and out of the calm scene.

If part of the trauma memory intrudes on the calm scene, that is called an “intersection.”  If the memory intersects with the calm scene, instruct the client: “see the part of the memory that came into your calm scene go into your container, see the door close, and push your container even farther away.  Push it several hundred miles away.”  Then immediately return to Step Four for another round of calm scene with blinks.

If the client reports that he was able to be mostly in the scene, go to Step Five to get the next link of activation.  Again, most of the work will occur in a cycle between Steps Four and Five.

Important suggestion: Since loading the calm scene quickly is such a key part of this therapy, it is a good idea to do two rounds in Step Four prior to checking the bad memory in Step Five the first time you arrive in Step Four.  Do not do repeated rounds of Step Four after the first time you are in this step when working on a memory or it will unnecessarily slow the process.

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Step Three: Select the Target Memory (But Do Not Activate It)

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This step requires a little caution. We need to identify the memory that the client wants to work, however, we do not want to activate it.  This is kind of like using the cursor to point to the file on the computer desktop that we want to use, but we don’t double-click it or think about what is in it.  Encourage the client not to talk about it… not even for a few moments.   It’s important that the memory be an actual and individual memory and not a thought, a negative cognition, a general presenting issue (weight or identity issues), or a large cluster of memories.  It is also important to instruct the client that we are working on only one memory at a time and that if other memories want to come, we will need to contain them in a large overflow vault or put them on a shelf for the moment.  You may be tempted to check the SUDs here.  We do not check the residual distress ever in this version of Flash.  You do not need to know and checking the SUDs is what we do when we want to cause activation (which we are not trying to do here).

Step Three should last a maximum of 15-20 seconds.  If you are consistently taking longer than 15-20 seconds and you are not troubleshooting overactivation, you are probably overactivating it (which is one of the major reasons why some Flash sessions don’t end in sunshine).

Before finalizing the selection of the memory, you should always engage client parts for consent or guidance: Do any parts of you have concerns about working on this memory?  If a part objects, involve that part in selecting a memory that may be more tolerable, then ask all parts if the new memory is an acceptable memory.  Repeat if necessary.

Once we identify a memory, we instruct the client to see the general idea of the memory go out of awareness.

Here are some script examples for this part of the process depending on the circumstances, adjust as needed:

  • If the memory was identified in the prior session, you might say: Is that memory that we discussed at the end of last session still the one that you want to work on, or is there another one?  … Good.  Now, see the general idea of that memory (don’t play it) go out of your awareness.  Just push the idea of it farther and farther away until all of awareness is blank.
  • To quickly select a memory that has been recently triggering:  We have talked about using this Flash therapy to work on difficult memory.  Do you have a specific bad memory that would be helpful to work on today?  Maybe one that has been coming up the past week or so. It can be recent or old, but it should be an individual memory and we will only work on this memory. Without telling me much about it, can you let me know when you have a memory that you would like to work on? Good.  See the general idea of that memory (without playing it) go out of your awareness… send it miles and miles away.  Let me know when it is gone.

If the general idea of the memory feels like it is out of awareness, go to Step Four.  If it keeps seeping into awareness, then too much was probably activated in identifying it.  Instruct the client not to engage the memory.  If the memory was activated, you may need to put that distress in the container and push the container out of awareness (again, be careful to not activate the memory in Step Three).  You may need to use the Shop-Vac resource to get distress out of the body if identifying the memory caused body activation.